Areas of Expertise

Professor Arrington specializes in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. Her research interests include civil society, social movements, democratic governance, law and society, policy-making processes, the media and politics, and qualitative methods. She is also interested in the international relations and security of Northeast Asia and transnational activism.

Professor Arrington earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. from Princeton University. She was an advanced research fellow in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University in 2010-2011. During the 2011-2012 year, she was a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was also a member of the Mike and Maureen Mansfield Foundation’s U.S.-Japan Network for the Future and its U.S.-Korea Scholar-Policymaker Nexus. In 2017-2018, she was a fellow at the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Current Research

Professor Arrington is currently writing a book analyzing lawyers' roles in policy-making and the growing prominence of litigation, the courts, and rights language in Japanese and Korean politics. The book project focuses on policies related to persons with disabilities and tobacco control. Other ongoing projects explore how lawyers organize, disability-related protest, evolving legal opportunity structures, and state actor-movement coalitions in Korea and Japan.